Mothering in style

“A mother shouldn’t be a downtrodden, shapeless woman,” says Mary Ikoku, Head of Moms Africa, a growing organisation for women and working mothers.Its idea of a working mum goes beyond a career climber. It argues every mother is a working mother, even full-time housewives. “Even stay-at-home mothers need income. Every mother is a working mother. […]

“A mother shouldn’t be a downtrodden, shapeless woman,” says Mary Ikoku, Head of Moms Africa, a growing organisation for women and working mothers.
Its idea of a working mum goes beyond a career climber. It argues every mother is a working mother, even full-time housewives.
“Even stay-at-home mothers need income. Every mother is a working mother. Sitting at home to do housework and taking care of the children 24-7 is sometimes the hardest. If that kind of work is paid, it would be the highest paid.” She said.
A husband can pay a “stipend” to his homemaker wife, and the wife can save bits of the stipend for a rainy day.
“Whether a stipend or paid work, it is imperative that mothers start saving right from the very day they start work so that at the end of the day, there will be capital accumulation,” says Bibiana Okereafor, Head of Aegis, an empowerment initiative that educates women and children to have financial access.
“This will help them and their families as well as the nation. Because if there is no capital accumulation, we end up borrowing and when we borrow, the repayment will be pushed to the future generation, and that becomes a burden,” she said.
Moms Africa wants women to redefine motherhood, starting from parenting. Its physical gathering stretch from groups in Umuahia to possible meetings in Uruguay in future via online forums to link interested mothers in any part of the globe.
At its first-ever Moms Meet Up in Abuja, it insisted ideas as marketplace, mentoring, media, management, money and maternal health should not be foreign ideas to women.
“Motherhood in style is not a challenge but a responsibility,” explains Ikoku, herself a working mum. “We need to make it work, and you ask yourself: how do you make it work like clockwork?”
It is a difficult proposition, with home needs growing, family priorities changing, work demands mounting and children increasingly standing up to their parents and taking demands dad and mum never dared at their age.
 “Let’s go back to the most important unit of society.” Ikoku says. She argues that parents are “outsourcing parenthood” to house helps and gadgets.
That’s not a problem for Rita Ohwodo, a working mother of one, who says   juggling the roles of wife, mother and worker isn’t easy and yet doesn’t believe in having a house help in the home.
Her husband is Urhobo, the typical man who “believes it is the duty of the woman to take care of everything, including him. So he doesn’t do anything. His own is to provide the money,” says Ohwodo.
“My husband bathed my baby only once-that was on Fathers’ Day, and I had to pretend I was so sick, couldn’t stand up, started shaking, just for him to do the work.”
The daily routine of breakfast, breastfeeding and working has its benefits too. “It’s made me close to my daughter. I have friends who are married and have kids, and their children are not so close to them because they barely have time for them. They leave their kids to their house helps.” says Ohwodo.
Still pregnant, Nenk’mun Obaje expects to confront similar hurdles when her first child comes. “Taking care of the house, the baby and a grown-up man will be really stressful, but I should handle it,” she says. “As an upcoming mother, it is a challenge I see ahead of me, and I’m prepared for it.”
When her maternity rest is over, she hopes to start a business, financed by her husband. It’s an advantage many women like her lack.
Statistics indicate unbanked Nigerians exceed 46%, most of them women-without access to financial services. They are a target for cashless services, microfinance and new electronic wallets-if only those services can find them.
If they do, “we believe, there will be improvement in their life and reduction in youth restiveness,” says Okereafor, who’s worked on Broad Street while raising her kids.
The imperative to save is why she is glad about the Sovereign Wealth Fund, she says, “to take care of uncertainties, the future of the children, and of course issues of instability and infrastructure.”
With respect to their kids, Moms Africa hopes to open value clubs in schools to teach children morality, patriotism, volunteerism.
It might help women cope with globalisation and dynamics that render them finance-less. “There’s more pressure on women because you can’t say the reason you didn’t get to the top of your career is because you are nursing. You will need to keep climbing, breaking the glass ceiling,” Ikoku says.
Moms Africa targets and awards companies that make motherhood conducive with working-including those that offer crèches, paid maternity leave and don’t implement discriminatory policies against working mothers.
Despite what modern mums want in a redefined motherhood, there’s still a glass ceiling to crash through. Numbers suggest more women are getting into the workplace and seizing important positions.
In the absence of money, management, mentoring, the idea of the 50-foot woman is still somewhere close to five feet. But she comes out looking quite good, if a fashion parade of pregnant women is anything to go by.
“They say we are the neck,” states Ohwodo. “We really are the neck, because it is not easy. I see we women as the hero of everything.”